Touring Talbott Farms - Colorado’s Largest Peach and Wine Grape Producer (Westword)
Abigail Bliss
September 16, 2024
Over six generations, this Palisade farm has grown to include a winery and vineyard, hard cidery and 350-acre orchard — but things haven’t always been so peachy.
Before there was the Palisade Peach Festival, residents of this Western Slope town gathered for Iowa Day, a celebration of community members who had recently relocated from that Midwest state. Many early settlers were Iowa farmers who received promotional brochures mailed from Mesa County, which claimed it had unlimited water from the Colorado River, unlimited coal at a dollar a ton, and a more dependable climate for growing fruit than the San Joaquin Valley of California.
“That’s absolutely not true,” scoffs Bruce Talbott. His great-great-grandfather Joseph Evan Yeager was one of those Iowa transplants, drawn to the Western Slope like a bee to honey — or, more appropriately, peaches. He planted one of Palisade’s first orchards in 1907; today, family-owned and operated Talbott Farms is the largest peach producer and largest wine grape producer in the state.
Each season, it grows around 350 acres of peaches, 160 acres of grapes and about forty acres of miscellaneous produce including plums, cherries, apricots and hybrids like peacotums and pluots. But its bounty, both in terms of harvests and revenue, hasn’t always come easy.
“We were 90 percent apples, 5 percent pears, 5 percent peaches,” Bruce says of the harvest in 1985, when he and his brothers took over ownership of the farm from their grandfather. But major problems soon rotted much of the local apple industry.
“It was painful,” recalls Bruce. “Our last crop of apples, Red and Golden Delicious, was in 1999, and it was worth $20 a ton. We were going to go bankrupt very quickly if we kept doing what we were doing.”
So the fifth-generation owners pivoted to peaches.
Peaches now at the core of the business
From July to September, the farm now yields between six to eight million pounds of peaches. Within three days of picking, they’re brought into its production facility, where a mechanical arm seizes a large bin and submerges the fruit in water to begin the cleaning process. They then float down a lazy river-like chute that leads to a series of brushes.
“The first series is brushing off debris, so it’ll take off leaves and dirt. The second is getting a little deeper into that dirt. The very last set of brushes de-fuzzes the peach,” says Charles Talbott, son of Bruce and director of operations.
From there, a team of six people begins sorting the peaches. Anything that’s especially ripe gets tossed down a chute to a green machine that processes the fruit. Some goes to Colorado-based dairy company Noosa, which sells tubs of sweet peach yogurt; the extra-ripe peaches are also made into puree found in several local peach beers, including Breckenridge Brewery’s iconic Palisade Peach Wheat Ale and Bruz Beers’ award-winning Oak Marionette on Peaches sour.
After this initial round of sorting, the peaches go through a machine that snaps 150 pictures to detect any blemishes. Anything with marred aesthetics pops out on one line and will be shipped out as No. 2 peaches per grade standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Those the machine determines are blemish-free and good to size are deemed No. 1 peaches and go through a separate line. Scale trays move the fruit down the line and drop them into sections based on weight. Sixteen-pound boxes are then packed, stamped, stacked on pallets, wrapped, moved into a cooler and then onto a delivery truck.
Because smaller Colorado orchards largely ship in-state, Talbott Farms targets the less-saturated Midwest market. Hy-Vee, a grocery store chain with more than 240 retail locations, is its biggest customer. It also sells peaches, among other items, to Sprouts and Kroger.
Sure, out-of-state grocers could carry peaches grown in Georgia, South Carolina or the country’s largest peach producer, California. But Charles explains that Palisade peaches are special.
“Colorado is one of the smallest producers, but we’re the highest-priced peach in the United States because we pick a lot closer to ripe,” he says. “In California, they’ll pick it green because then they have a longer season for its stability, whereas we tree-ripen everything. We hit it right before it goes soft, package it and it’s in the grocery store within 36 hours.
“The thing that makes our fruit different is, in Colorado, we have 350 days of sunshine and a high diurnal shift,” he adds. During the daytime, when temperatures are really high, the peaches build up sugars; come night, when Palisade often experiences a 20- to 40-degree drop, the peaches lock in acid. “Even with our wine grapes, it gives us a much different terroir than everywhere else,” comments Charles.
How Wine Came Into the Picture
Around the time that the region’s apple industry largely died out, Plum Creek Cellars, which has since sold to Palisade-based Colterris Winery, approached Talbott Farms with an offer. If Bruce agreed to grow wine grapes, Plum Creek would send over a viticulturist, commit to a set volume and pay a fair price. Since peaches are a summer crop and grapes are harvested between September and October, the deal made sense.
Today, some grapes are sold to Talbott Farms’ thirty winery clients. Other partners purchase ready-made juice, which is produced on-site. After harvesting, grapes are forklifted into a large machine that removes their stems. Then, they’re pumped into a press that places continuous pressure on the fruit during a two-hour cycle. This process results in juice batches as large as 600 gallons, which are shipped to wineries that include Carboy Winery and Bugling Elk.
Some juice batches are kept for Centennial Cellars, a wine brand that Charles and his brother, Joe Talbott, co-own. Its white varieties are fermented for six to twelve weeks, while reds can take anywhere from six months to two years. “This year will be the first that we’re releasing all of our reds,” Charles notes.